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2019: This blog was ranked #50 in top 100 blogs about adoption. Let's make it #1...

2019: WE NEED A TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION Commission in the US now for the Adoption Programs that stole generations of children... Goldwater Institute's work to dismantle ICWA is another glaring attempt at cultural genocide.

Tuesday, March 19, 2019

In this episode, renowned experts on American Indian law and policy,
Matthew Fletcher and Wenona Singel, discuss the nuanced and highly
complex field of American Indian Law. Matthew and Wenona begin by
exploring the history of tribal sovereignty, and discuss
the rights of American Indians as both tribal citizens and U.S.
citizens. We then explore jurisdiction across border lines,
particularly in a criminal context. Matthew and Wenona discuss the
history of violence against native women, and why, until recently,
prosecution has been so difficult. The history of and current U.S.
court challenges to the Indian Child Welfare Act are also examined.

Turtle
Talk is the blog for the Indigenous Law and Policy Center at Michigan
State University College of Law. It is the leading law blog on American
Indian law and policy. Matthew Fletcher is the primary editor and
author. It specializes in providing access to primary documents related
to current topics in American Indian law and policy — court opinions and
pleadings, federal government documents, scholarly materials, and other
sources.

NEW ORLEANS — The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments Wednesday in
Brackeen v. Bernhardt, in which the United States and tribal
nations stand together in defense of the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA)
and the American Indian and Alaska Native children that it serves. A
nationwide coalition of 325 tribal nations, 57
Native organizations, 21 states, 31 child welfare organizations, 7
members of Congress, and dozens of scholars of federal Indian law and
constitutional law also stood with the parties in court during their
amicus briefs supporting Native children and families
through the Indian Child Welfare Act.

“ICWA is vital to the well-being of Native children and the stability
and integrity of Native families today. We can’t afford to go back to
the days when massive numbers of Native children were forcibly removed
from their loved ones and were often separated
from their families with little hope of ever seeing them again. It’s
not an option,” said the Protect ICWA Campaign.

The National Indian Child Welfare Association, the National Congress of
American Indians, the Association on American Indian Affairs, and the
Native American Rights Fund urge the ruling of the district court to be
reversed.

A decision by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals is expected within a few months after the oral argument.

How does measuring poverty and welfare affect American Indian children? (aka #povertyporn)

For one group of children in particular, American Indians and
Alaska Natives, exceedingly high poverty rates have had profound impacts
on community wellbeing and long-term cohesiveness. Given the best
available data, from the U.S. Census data, child poverty rates among
American Indians and Alaska Natives have consistently exceeded 40% for
almost the past 30 years.*

“Small sample sizes in population surveys have made it
particularly difficult to reliably measure poverty rates among American
Indian and Alaska Native children. Moreover, we know little about the
effectiveness of a number of important programs and policies – whether
provided by the tribes, by the states, or by the federal government –
that affect this population.”

As a result, it is quite difficult to accurately track the impact
that various programs have had on child poverty over time or how
applicable standard assessments of what poverty looks like actually are
to American Indian communities.
Are conditions as bad as indicated by
the official poverty rates shown above? (see website)

Historically, high levels of
perceived poverty have been used to justify the removal of American
Indian children from their households by state foster care systems. As
recently as the 1970s, state welfare agents were removing almost one
third of all American Indian children from their households and placing
them in state foster or adoptive care systems. (Mannes, 1995)

One of the aims of the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) of 1978 was to
stop the removal of American Indian children from their households due
to poverty. A number of studies had confirmed that social workers were
removing American Indian children from households not due to
maltreatment or being orphaned but simply due to the perceived poverty
status of the household (see MacEachron, Ann E., and Nora Gustavsson,
2005). The ICWA legislation was intended to improve tribal control over
the determination and placement of American Indian children within the
foster care system.

Congress reaffirmed tribal government authority and oversight of the
placement of its own citizens – its children. Tribal courts were
delegated the authority and jurisdiction over the placement of its own
citizens (and those eligible for tribal citizenship enrollment) in
foster or adoptive homes.
For instance, Chris Newell (Passamaquoddy; Director of Education;
Akomawt Educational Initiative) describes a fundamental misunderstanding
of the concept of family and neglect in his Passamaquoddy community in
Maine:

“In Maine, parents would often leave their children with their
grandparents or other extended family members when they would leave for
seasonal work elsewhere. To the state, however, this constitutes neglect
and could qualify a child for removal. In reality, our children’s needs
were commonly met by extended family and community beyond the nuclear
family.”

Mr. Newell served as a senior advisor on a recent documentary film called “Dawnland,”
which exposes the impact of such practices on American Indian children
and their parents decades later in the state of Maine. The film depicts
the long-term trauma and damage that resulted from the removal of
children from their families; it also shows the damage to the children
caused by their removal from their kinship network and cultural
connections.

Individuals with little exposure to or
experience with American Indian communities would have little to no
knowledge of these forms of social safety nets.

Assessing economic conditions may also be quite difficult for
individuals who are unfamiliar with American Indian communities and
practices. There are important culturally-specific safety nets that
exist in many American Indian communities; most of which would be
unknown to outsiders. Individuals with little exposure to or experience
with American Indian communities would have little to no knowledge of
these forms of social safety nets.

The recent NAS report indicates that even standard measures of
poverty are difficult to measure for the American Indian population.
However, neither the Official Poverty Measure (OPM) nor the Supplemental
Poverty Measure (SPM), which includes taxes and federal government
in-kind transfers, account for community or kinship in-kind transfers or
from tribal governments. In certain American Indian communities, for
instance, hunting, trapping, fishing and other subsistence activities
are important parts of the economic and social interactions of community
members. These activities do not show up directly as cash income nor
are they identified as federal government in-kind transfers. As a
result, the OPM and SPM measures may not accurately depict the general
welfare of American Indian families or children. In fact, they may
understate the resources in some families and whole communities.

While this does not dismiss the fact that child poverty is probably
still too high in many American Indian reservations, it does indicate
that there may be other activities or practices that exist in non-market
(even non-governmental) forms to assist families. Subsistence
activities and the sharing of resources is difficult to document with
administrative records or tax returns; nevertheless, these safety nets
have played an important role in these communities for hundreds if not
thousands of years. Individuals with little exposure to or experience
with American Indian communities would have little to no knowledge of
these forms of social safety nets.

Challenges to ICWA often focus on an erroneous assumption that these
policies are race-based.
However, providing tribal government
jurisdiction and authority over its own citizens’ welfare is based on
American Indian tribal sovereignty- not race. Tribal citizenship
enrollment and eligibility is based on tribal government rules which are
often specific to a particular tribe and may require showing direct
lineal descent from certain enrolled ancestors; there may be other
additional conditions for tribal citizenship such as a minimum blood
quantum, residency requirement or demonstrated relationship with the
community. In the current court case, Brackeen v. Zinke, where
oral arguments are scheduled to begin in the Fifth Circuit court this
week, the same arguments have been made. ICWA has played an important
role in stopping the seizure of American Indian children from their
communities. Misunderstanding of how American Indian communities care
for their own children and the inability to assess non-monetary
well-being of American Indian communities should not play a role in the
removal of children from their homes. ICWA plays a critical role in
safeguarding these children and maintaining the local and tribal
authority for placing American Indian children in foster or adoptive
care. Let’s not go backwards.

Sources:“7 Other Policy and Program
Approaches to Child Poverty Reduction.” National Academies of Sciences,
Engineering, and Medicine. 2019. A Roadmap to Reducing Child Poverty.
Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. Page XXX. doi:
10.17226/25246Mannes, M. (1995). Factors and events leading to the passage of the Indian Child Welfare Act. Child Welfare, 74(1), 264–282.National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2019. A
Roadmap to Reducing Child Poverty. Washington, DC: The National
Academies Press. “7 Other Policy and Program Approaches to Child Poverty
Reduction.” Page 203. doi: 10.17226/25246.MacEachron, A. E., Gustavsson, N. S., Cross, S., & Lewis, A.
(1996). The effectiveness of the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978. The
Social Service Review, 70(3), 451–463.

Related

*Editor Note: The government takes the land AND causes the poverty, then they want more LAND and take the children to achieve this goal. The genocide cycle never ends... That is the sport of colonization and empire. Trace

The Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) is a long-standing federal law
protecting the well-being of Native children by upholding family
integrity and stability within their community; and the “gold standard”
in child welfare policy.
October 2018, Judge Reed O’Connor of the U.S. District Court for the
Northern District of Texas ruled that ICWA was unconstitutional in its
entirety based on the Equal Protection Clause and the 14th Amendment.
January 2019 in defense of ICWA an impressive array of state and
national organizations joined in support of Tribal nations and
representatives headed by Casey Family Programs and joined by CWLA and
other organizations. On Wednesday, March 13 the Fifth Circuit Court of
Appeals will be hearing oral arguments for the appeal of Brackeen v.
Bernhardt (previously known as Brackeen v. Zinke).

The National Indian Child Welfare Association (NICWA) is hosting a
Twitter chat on Wednesday, March 13, 2019 at 12pm ET to educate people
about ICWA, discuss why the law is important today, hear the Native
youth perspective, and encourage people to get involved in standing up
for ICWA. Simply tag, follow, retweet, and join the virtual conversation
through the designated hashtag—#ProudtoProtectICWA.

Adoption of native children broke families apart while others profitted

Char-Koosta News

PABLO–
Sandra White Hawk (Sicangu Lakota) said she was 18-months-old when she
recalled being taken in a red pickup truck. “I remembered sitting
between these two strangers,” she said. “I didn’t know where I was
going. I had an outer body experience from the trauma of it all and I
remember watching myself drive down the dirt road with these people.”

The
strangers were White Hawk’s adoptive parents and they were a white
missionary couple originally from Illinois. White Hawk said she suffered
abuse during her upbringing in their home. “It was difficult being the
only Native person in town and there was racism,” she said. “My adoptive
mother suffered from mental illness and I was subjected to abuse.”

White
Hawk said she was placed in the foster care system through a referral
made by a Catholic church that operated on the Rosebud Reservation in
South Dakota. “Churches received federal funding for referring Native
children into the foster care system on my reservation,” she said. “The
truth is this is a business and it’s tearing many Native people from
their homes.”

White Hawk collaborated with filmmakers Drew
Nicholas and Megan Whitmer to document her experience as a foster care
survivor in the film “Blood Memory,” which was screened at Salish
Kootenai College. “I’m thankful that this story could be shared,” White
Hawk said. “There are many survivors out there without a voice.”

The
film investigates the epidemic of Native American children being taken
from their homes since the Indian Civilization Act (1819), which
resulted in over 60,000 Native American children being forced to attend
government funded boarding schools throughout the country. Whitmer said
she was horrified reading through old accounts from boarding school
staff. “They discussed the money they were receiving from the
government,” she said. “They talked about how the schools were cheaper
than what it would cost to kill the Native people but this was a
business since early on.”

The business of adoption and child
welfare in America is a $16 billion industry, according to 2018 reports
from the business market research firm IBIS World. Nicholas has been
working on the project since 2010 and said it was a learning experience.
“It was eye-opening for me to learn that adoption isn’t just this
beautiful thing, we’re seeing that it can be really terrible too,” he
said. “It’s a huge industry and historically Native communities have
been the most vulnerable.”

The
film highlights the “Indian Adoption Era,” which was a federal program
conducted between 1958 through 1967, which resulted in 35 percent of all
Native American children being forcibly removed from their homes and
adopted into white families. “There is this white superiority complex
that says that we as Native people can’t take care of ourselves and that
mentality has been very destructive,” White Hawk said.

Thanks to
the testimony of Native American mothers who went before Congress, the
Indian Child Welfare Act was passed in 1978. The legislation is now
considered the “gold standard” in adoption practices and governs
legislation over Native American children. “It took 20 years for this
epidemic of Native children being placed in the foster care system to be
addressed by the federal government,” Nicholas said. “The women who
went before Congress truly were heroic.”

Since ICWA passed, Native
American children are still overrepresented in the foster care system.
The National Indian Child Welfare Association (NICWA) reports that rates
of Native American children in the foster care system are 2.7 times
greater than the general population in 2017 and 40 percent of the cases
are placed by tribal authorities. In Montana, Native American children
account for 30 percent of the state’s out of home care cases.

White
Hawk works with fellow Native American survivors of the foster care
system. “Blood Memory” is currently being screened across the country
and was an official selection for the 2019 Big Sky Documentary Film
Festival.

Sunday, March 10, 2019

PALA,
CA – The Pala Band of Mission Indians is the first tribe in California
to receive clearance to conduct LiveScan background checks for tribal
foster homes under new State law (Senate Bill 1460).

The tribe is also
the first to apply to the Bureau of Indian Affairs' Office of Justice
Services (BIA-OJS) program, Purpose Code X, to assist tribal services
agencies within federally recognized tribes that are seeking to place
children in safe homes during an emergency situation, when parents are
unable to provide for their welfare.

"We
are very excited to be a part of this momentous change to protect our
Native youth in the welfare system," said Robert Smith, Chairman of the
Pala Band of Mission Indians. "For years, Native American children have
been placed in homes that do not reflect their cultural heritage and
placed with foster parents who have not had their criminal history
thoroughly vetted because the tribe was not allowed to conduct these
background checks. Now we can certify tribal homes that are prepared to
care for these children in a timely manner and ensure that Native
American children are maturing in an appropriate environment."

The
Purpose Code X program provides BIA Office of Justice Services with the
ability to provide tribal social service agency partners with
much-needed information to help make sure children requiring emergency
placement will be placed in safe homes. The program arose out of a 2014
working group formed by the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Interior
(DOI) to identify sustainable solutions addressing the civil needs of
the tribes. Under this program, BIA dispatch centers will be available
to provide 24-hour access to criminal history records, so name-based
checks can be done immediately.

With the changes made in
California law, tribes are now able to receive criminal history and
child abuse information from the California DOJ and be involved in the
approval of tribal foster homes. The law also provides for the transfer
of Native American children case records from a county to tribal
government. Under new standards for foster homes, the tribe will be
provided with a federal criminal offender check of all adults residing
in a family home, as a condition for approval.

"It has been an
honor to be part of the work behind SB 1460 and to see the positive
impact it has made for Pala and the other California Tribes," said
Season Brown, Director of Social Services of Pala Band of Mission
Indians. "I'm very excited for Pala to begin the new venture of piloting
Purpose Code X and being able to reduce the trauma experienced by our
Native children, which is often associated with being placed outside of
their Tribal community in Non-Native homes."

Purpose Code X and
California State law are now working cohesively to ensure that tribes
are able to effectively serve and protect their communities by ensuring
the exchange of critical data.

California State Attorney General
Kamala D. Harris has made it a priority to protect the rights of
children and focus the attention and resources of law enforcement and
policymakers in safeguarding every child so that they can meet their
full potential. These measures will ensure that laws and regulations
enacted to protect children, inclusive of Indian welfare children, are
consistently and effectively enforced.

The Pala Band of Mission
Indians is a federally recognized tribe whose reservation is located
along the Palomar Mountain range approximately 30 miles northeast of San
Diego. The majority of the over 900 tribal members live on the
12,000-acre reservation, established for Cupeño and Luiseño Indians, who
consider themselves to be one proud people - Pala. WIKI

President Rutherford Hayes, prompted by the Supreme Court holding,
declared the Indians "trespassers" and ordered the tribe relocated to
Pala, California, just beyond the Palomar Mountains where a 10,000-acre
reservation had been established. Pala was a Luiseno reservation then,
not Cupa.

This act marked the first time in U.S. history that two
distinct Indian tribes were herded together in one reservation. This was
a blemish upon a nation that prided itself on leading the world into
the 20th Century and the cultural and political renaissance that
accompanied such a transition.

On the morning of May 12, 1903,
Indian Bureau agent James Jenkins arrived with 44 armed teamsters to
carry out the eviction. Rosinda Nolasquez — the last survivor of the
expulsion — later testified that "Many carts stood there by the doors.
People came from La Mesa, from Santa Ysabel, from Wilakal, from San
Ignacio to see their relatives. They cried a lot. And they just threw
our belongings, our clothes, into carts."

The 40-mile journey from Cupa to Pala took three days. The Cupeños call it their "Trail of Tears."

Saturday, March 9, 2019

Autumn Adams spent a good portion of her life in foster care.
She says the Indian Child Welfare Act saved her life because she was
able to stay in her tribal community. ICWA is called the 'gold standard'
of child welfare policy. The 40-year-old law
is under fire through a number of court cases, including a recent
federal court ruling out of Texas that deemed the law unconstitutional.
We'll hear from individuals who have been affected by ICWA.

Native America Calling is a
national call-in program that invites guests and listeners to join a
dialogue about current events, music, arts, entertainment and culture.

The program is hosted by Tara Gatewood (Isleta Pueblo) and airs live each weekday from 1-2 pm Eastern.

(excerpt) No placement may be perfect when you are a foster youth. I can speak from personal experience.
I have been in and out of the foster system with my younger siblings
since I was 9. Amid so many unknowns, one thing remains certain: I am
grateful I was placed within my tribal community....

I am now raising my younger siblings, getting a degree in anthropology at Central Washington University and applying to law school. I wouldn’t be able to say that I’m graduating in June without the strength of my culture and the support from my family. In five years, I hope to be surviving law school while raising a teenage girl, my youngest sibling.

Losing our culture is not an option for us.

We go to longhouse when we can; we feast and perform traditional funerals for departed loved ones. My siblings know this history. They know these protocols and they know how to complete them in the traditional way. They know their identity. We are all stronger for this connection to our people.

It is imperative that the appeals court keeps ICWA intact, because it has allowed me to build the strong foundation to the person I am today.

Saturday, March 2, 2019

Judge: State deference to U.S. law in Native American adoptions is unconstitutional

A Tarrant County judge on Friday ruled that the state’s
requirement for family law judges to apply the federal Indian Child
Welfare Act to child custody cases is unconstitutional.

Tarrant County state district judge Alex Kim issued the ruling in response to the adoption of an 8-month-old Native American girl into a non-Native American family.

Chad
and Jennifer Brackeen had been seeking to adopt their second Native
American child but ran into problems in the court with a portion of the
Texas Family Code, which requires that family law judges apply the
Indian Child Welfare Act to child custody cases involving Native
American children.

State law says judges should should defer to
the federal act, which says that placement of Native American children
must go first to the child’s extended family, then to other members of
the child’s tribe or other Native American families.

Kim said in his decision that the federal law is not applicable in the Brackeens’ case because it is unconstitutional.

On Friday, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton lauded the ruling.

Paxton’s
office in October 2017 filed a federal lawsuit alongside the Brackeens,
challenging the constitutionality of the Indian Child Welfare Act is it
applies to child custody cases, saying that it places race-based
restrictions on the adoption of Native American children and does not
consider the best interests of the child.

A U.S. district court the following year ruled
the law as applied was unconstitutional. That decision is currently
being challenged in the federal 5th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Friday, March 1, 2019

15 years already? How I changed...but has adoption perception changed?

By Trace Hentz, ADOPTEE ACTIVIST

If you had asked me in 2004 or 2014 what I had planned for myself, I would
have not said “writing” about adoption, child trafficking, Indian Adoption
Programs/Projects, the 60s Scoop, Stolen Generations and Cultural Genocide
research.

As an adoptee, I'd attended the first Wiping the Tears ceremony in Wisconsin
and met the organizers Sandy White Hawk (an adoptee) and
elder Chris Leith. Then my world changed.
I'd learn more hidden history.

How adoption affected me: I'd never told my story of opening my adoption while
I lived it. A few friends knew details but not all of it. I got the idea for a
book when I wrote an article in 2005 about stolen generations of North American
Indian children placed for adoption with non-Indian parents. That article,
"Generation after Generation, We are Coming Home" was published in Talking
Stick magazine in New York City and then in News from Indian Country
in Wisconsin. It took me down a path I never expected.

I'd find new information, new history, meet new adoptees, and grow more
concerned.*

It's true many bloggers hoped we made a strong and lasting impression,
to impact and end the propaganda since the early 2000s. I am not sure we can
actually gauge or measure how world views of adoption have changed. (If books
on Amazon are an indication, memoirs by adoptees are now climbing the
ranks over all the propaganda books about how to buy/adopt a baby.)

It's also true some blogger friends stopped blogging on adoption out of pure
exhaustion!

SUPPLY AND DEMAND

If the statistics on adoption are any indication,
the number of babies adopted by Americans are dropping each and every
year. There is definitely a BIG demand for infants (primarily because of infertility) but there remains a short supply of newborns/babies to
adopt. (I do think the adoption traffickers are constantly
reinventing new ways to grab a fresh supply of infants.

Indian
Country has lived through this over a century with forced assimilation, child snatching and
disappearing children. The government's motive: take more LAND (or what is on or under the land). Targeting children, the future of Indian Country, was obvious.

White people believe they deserve the right to adopt without considering the best needs of the Native child who is sovereign and future of their tribal nation.

Survivors, write your stories. Write your parents stories. Write the elders stories. Do not be swayed by the colonizers to keep quiet. Tribal Nations have their own way of keeping stories alive.... Trace

Help in available!

1-844-7NATIVE (click photo)

click to listen

Diane Tells His Name

Please support NARF

Indian Country is under attack. Native tribes and people are fighting hard for justice. There is need for legal assistance across Indian Country, and NARF is doing as much as we can. With your help, we have fought for 48 years and we continue to fight.

It is hard to understand the extent of the attacks on Indian Country. We are sending a short series of emails this month with a few examples of attacks that are happening across Indian Country and how we are standing firm for justice.

Today, we look at recent effort to undo laws put in place to protect Native American children and families. All children deserve to be raised by loving families and communities. In the 1970s, Congress realized that state agencies and courts were disproportionately removing American Indian and Alaska Native children from their families. Often these devastating removals were due to an inability or unwillingness to understand Native cultures, where family is defined broadly and raising children is a shared responsibility. To stop these destructive practices, Congress passed the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA).

After forty years, ICWA has proven to be largely successful and many states have passed their own ICWAs. This success, however, is now being challenged by large, well-financed opponents who are actively and aggressively seeking to undermine ICWA’s protections for Native children. We are seeing lawsuits across the United States that challenge ICWA’s protections. NARF is working with partners to defend the rights of Native children and families.

where were you adopted?

To Veronica Brown

Veronica, we adult adoptees are thinking of you today and every day. We will be here when you need us. Your journey in the adopted life has begun, nothing can revoke that now, the damage cannot be undone. Be courageous, you have what no adoptee before you has had; a strong group of adult adoptees who know your story, who are behind you and will always be so.

Join!

National Indigenous Survivors of Child Welfare Network (NISCWN)

Membership Application Form

The Network is open to all Indigenous and Foster Care Survivors any time.

ADOPTION TRUTH

As the single largest unregulated industry in the United States, adoption is viewed as a benevolent action that results in the formation of “forever families.” The truth is that it is a very lucrative business with a known sales pitch. With profits last estimated at over $1.44 billion dollars a year, mothers who consider adoption for their babies need to be very aware that all of this promotion clouds the facts and only though independent research can they get an accurate account of what life might be like for both them and their child after signing the adoption paperwork.

This has happened to many, many Native children! We must protect ICWA and enforce it so that it stops! Even non-Native families that are not racist cannot provide a Native child with cultural knowledge and belonging. Only their tribes can do that. #ProudtoProtectICWAhttps://t.co/oA1e5kiK4k

A4: Twenty-one states filed an amicus brief in this case in support of #ICWA. These states, which are home to over 70 percent of tribal nations, know that ICWA helps them better serve Native children and families.#ProudtoProtectICWA

TWO WORLDS Book 1 (second edition)

Two Worlds anthology (Vol. 1)

“…sometimes shocking, often an emotional read…this book is for individuals interested in the culture and history of the Native American Indian, but also on the reading lists of universities offering ethnic/culture/Native studies.”

“Well-researched and obviously a subject close to the heart of the authors/compilers, I found the extent of what can only be described as ‘child-snatching’ from the Native Americans quite staggering. It’s not something I was aware of before…”

“The individual pieces are open and honest and give a good insight into the turmoil of dislocation from family and tribe… I think it does have value and a story to tell. I was affected by the stories I read, and amazed by the facts presented…. because it is saying something new, interesting and often astonishing.”

Did you know?

Good words

I agree with you on the caring of “orphans” – true orphans, not “paper orphans” as Kathryn Joyce describes in her book, The Child Catchers. The most important thing to remember, however, is that the orphan’s original identity and family connection and heritage must remain intact and available to him or her forever. This business of adoption – and I do mean the multi-billion-dollar, unregulated business of adoption – of wiping out the child’s original identity, falsifying birth records with the adopters’ names, altering facts such as place of birth, severing familial kinship, must stop … Immediately. And the outrageous injustices foisted upon adoptees and their families for the past 100 years must be addressed and righted. We are faced today with six to seven million people who were basically legally kidnapped, sold to the highest bidder, their identities falsified, and placed in a lifelong, imposed witness protection program for which there is no legal recourse. Then told by church officials, agency and government functionaries that they have no right to know who they are, to do genealogy or learn about important family medical history, or know the identity of or associate with blood relatives. This is how the Judeo-Christian society has interpreted “caring for orphans”, for it’s own selfish interests and greed. Starting with Georgia Tann, the woman charged with kidnapping and selling 5,000 children, most of whom were given to the rich and powerful who then colluded with her to “seal” adoptions and cover their nefarious activities (see, for example, Gov. Herbert Lehman, NY, 1935).

We are #50 in the world?

Every. Day.

adoptees take back adoption narrative and reject propaganda

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